‘For Chinese business leaders, the hesitation to adopt cloud technologies isn’t just an IT issue – it’s at the root of a much larger problem’.

“Cloud will provide the digital infrastructure of tomorrow’s cities, where an estimated six billion of the world’s population will live by 2045,” Joy Tan, who leads the communications and branding team at Huawei, the Chinese telecom group, said. “Smart elevators and parking lots, driverless cars and drone taxis, trains and subways, farms and power plants – all will be safer and better managed, thanks to the cloud’s ability to store and analyze data.”

At week’s end, global investors and policy makers will likely be given a stark reminder of the costs of a bitter Sino-U.S. trade war, with a Reuters poll predicting that China’s third-quarter growth will slow to its weakest pace since the global financial crisis.

This is only the third such move by Beijing in the last 14 years, and the first involving bonds with a 30-year maturity.

China sold $1.5 billion of five-year bonds at 3.25 percent, $1 billion of 10-year bonds at 3.5 percent, and $500 million of 30-year bonds at four percent, the Finance Ministry said on Friday, as quoted by Reuters.

Germany's BMW will pay 3.6 billion euros (US$4.2 billion) to take control of its main joint venture in China, the first such move by a global carmaker as Beijing starts to relax ownership rules for the world's biggest auto market.

The luxury carmaker said on Thursday it would increase its stake in its venture with Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd to 75 percent from 50 percent, with the deal closing in 2022 when rules capping foreign ownership for all auto ventures are lifted.

Ultra-wealthy Chinese are leaving a trail of dollars across Australia, boosting sectors from property and education to luxury goods – but not everyone is happy about it.

Australia’s relationship with its biggest trade partner, China, has seen better days.

Australia was the world’s No 1 migration destination for millionaires last year, according to the 2018 Global Wealth Migration Review from AfrAsia Bank. More than 10,000 high-worth individuals migrated to Australia last year, mostly from China, India and the UK. And about 90 per cent of the visas Australia issued to high-worth investors – those who invest more than A$5 million (US$3.6 million) locally – were for Chinese nationals.

The Chinese are keen to invest in new terminals, docks, yards, logistics platforms and industrial areas.

In the northern Italian port, given its deeper integration into EU rail networks than Piraeus, the Greek port taken over by Cosco in 2016.

A seaport city of just over 200,000 residents in northeast Italy could play a significant geopolitical role in promoting Eurasian integration.

The port of Trieste is only the 11th busiest in Europe by tonnage, but nonetheless is designed to become the western end of the Maritime Silk Road, a key section of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative to improve connectivity between China and Western Europe.

The Chinese commerce ministry has slammed the US plan to impose tariffs on additional imports worth some $200 billion as totally unacceptable, promising a mirror response to defend its national interests.

“The Chinese side is shocked by the actions of the US,” a statement on the ministry’s website declared. “In order to safeguard the core interests of the country and the fundamental interests of the people, the Chinese government will, as always, have to make the necessary counter-measures.”

Investors watching the trade tit-for-tat between the United States and China may well have reason to fear the havoc a full blown conflict between the world’s two biggest economies could wreak on the global economy.

A model by economists at Pictet Asset Management in London reckons a 10 percent tariff on U.S. trade fully passed on to the consumer could tip the global economy into a state of stagflation and knock 2 and a half percent off corporate earnings.

Australia has ramped up anti-Chinese rhetoric, challenging Beijing over its growing influence in the Pacific. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Australia, stalwart anti-Chinese Adm. Harris, paints a clear picture of what’s to come.

In 1900, then-Senator Albert Beveridge famously said to lawmakers in Washington that “the power that rules the Pacific, is therefore the power that rules the world.”

As recent developments will demonstrate, this imperialist sentiment continues over 100 years later to the present day. The battle for control over the Pacific is taking place right before our very eyes and is placing both Australia and China in a precariously confrontational position, though the mainstream media refuses to pay due focus to the issue.